Physical Animation: The Ultimate Starter Guide [UE4/UE5]

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Hello dear viewer! Today we have a feature-length special that covers EVERYTHING you need to know about physical animation in Unreal Engine.
Physical animation can just be some extra sauce on your cake, or it can be integral to the core mechanics of your project. Regardless, it's one juicy pie that we're deep-diving into and I'm thrilled to be your shepherd on this perilous journey.
Physical hit reactions, floppy animations and ragdoll self-preservation are some of the examples used, but physical animation is applicable to much much more!
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Twitter: prismaticadev
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Computer Specs:
Ryzen 3900x 12-core CPU
MSI Geforce RTX 2080 Super
64GB Corsair RAM
One of those fancy nvme m.2 SSD's
Programs of choice:
Unreal Engine 4 - (Game Dev)
Blender 2.8 - (Animation and Modelling)
OBS - (Video/screen capture)
Davinci Resolve - (Video editing)
Adobe Photoshop - (Graphics and Texturing)
Quixel Mixer - (Texturing)
ProTools 11 - (Compositions and mixing)
OldSchool Runescape - (Chillax time)
Filmed using:
Sony A7s2 body
Sony 24-70mm f/2.8 GM lens
Yonguo YN360 LED's for colour
Yongnuo YN760 chip LED w/ Godox softbox for key
My lovely cats names are Boycat, Girlcat and Ladycat :)

[@PrismaticaDev]

Don't forget to grab your free month of Skillshare here! skl.sh/prismaticadev02221

[@acefp7547]

Yooo congrats on the sponsor!

[@kjdee140]

At 24:24 How do you click and drag the ragdoll during simulation? I can't seem to do that. CTRL + RIGHT CLICK

[@PrismaticaDev]

@@kjdee140 Yeah there are a few options, it's sooo inconsistent though haha. You can also ctrl + left click (maybe?) to "poke" the ragdoll, basically a hit

[@sunnymon1436]

31:24 It's common for people with colour blindness to see purple as blue. Not a major condition, and there have been many successful artists and designers who are colour blind. @MegaLag is for instance (who does colour grading for films), and NYC sculptor/designer Daniel Arsham who does some art about it.

[@shaneruetz5604]

It's worth noting that if your following along to this on a blank third person character project and you hit R and you ask yourself why is my guy not floppy? You need to select his mesh and under collision set collision presets to custom and set collision enabled to collision enabled (query and physics) otherwise nothing is going to happen. Don't know if you mentioned that, just figured I'd share. 😁

[@Cloudy0w0]

Thank you for that

[@ingmardejong7300]

Thank you for this!

[@luv0ne]

You.. are.. awesome!!!! Buy yourself a beer.

[@dermancandanisman9682]

Thank you!

[@supjay3945]

I think tjats what happened to my project. Unfortunately I havent tested it.

[@jdigi78]

If you had told 13 year old me using game maker in 2008 there would be high quality hour long tutorial videos freely available on the internet in the future about how to use a free game engine used by AAA studios I would have thought you were lying, but here we are. Thank you!

[@jakab174]

same, suck that we dont have that much time anymore :D I would sooo dive in this

[@JAYg33t4r]

@@jakab174 gotta make time for what you really want

[@elruchal]

Tell this story to my 13 years old, in 1995-1996, with a developing framework I obtained from a Paper Magazine, when I did my first 2d Game XD

[@GameDevAraz]

Sounds like a coherent thing to say lol

[@JammyJacker]

For anyone in ue 5.2.1, the physics asset for the preset mannequin has collisions set up perfectly already.

[@jonludwig1632]

Your note on Alt+Rotate for constraints just saved my butt after updating some models with new joint orients that had the physics asset joints and constraints in all the wrong directions. This video is hugely appreciated!

[@elruchal]

literally went crazy yesterday with this and changed my models Idk how many times XD

[@Schpeltiger]

imagine seeing jon here lol (am jelo btw)

[@o-super2744]

It's a small hint but for anyone wondering how to poke or drag a simulated body part the shortcut is: Ctrl+Right Click

[@lorenzogarbin8990]

The "never ending battle for depenetration" 😂 got me... Really like your tutorials.. you are so easy to follow ❤

[@epkostaring]

One year into developing my own game and this is the most exciting new stuff I learned in a while 🤩 Love your tutorial style 👍🏻

[@joelw1730]

I was preparing to do keyframe animations till the cows came home, but this changed my mind. Definitely worth subbing for, got lots of value out of this demonstration

[@lukeagex]

I feel like I've hit the jackpot with your vids. Am looking forward to exploring them all! Awesome to find a fellow Australian in this space too.

[@YouWillDoAsYouAreTold]

agree

[@elruchal]

literally trying to find the way to express the same.

[@justsomedev]

Great Video. Helped me out a lot. For anyone having weird collision problems in the mesh, The issue isn't about the contraints or physics profile rather the capsule collision in the CharacterBP. If anyone of you face this problem, Here's what u gotta do: Click on your Capsule component, and Find the collision settings. Set your Collision Preset as Custom and do the following settings: Collision Enabled: Query only Object Type: Pawn Trace Response: set both Camera and Visibility to Ignore World Dynamic: Block World Static: Block Rest of the settings should be set to Ignore Hope this helps.

[@genericclickbait5405]

I've just started to learn the basics of UE5 (within the last 2 days), and wanted to see if this kind of animation was even possible down the line. I am SO pumped to get through the learning to the point where I can come back to this video and start to implement it. I also wanted to say that Prismatica gives off really fun vibes!

[@battl3bear]

Can you help me at 9:30 ? I dont have a custom profile and it is not explained what it is or how to set it up? Or am I wrong? Basically everything after 9:30 is not working because I dont have a profile selected.

[@triq0]

@@battl3bear i'm having the exact same issue, the walking animation isn't blending with the ragdoll physics animation and i'm assuming its because i don't have the hitreactionprofile that he pulled out of his ass. let me know if you find/ have found a fix for this

[@battl3bear]

@@triq0 nope. I switched to Gorka Games. He carried me very hard in the beginnings of understanding UE and learning what is possible. Really cant recommend this Channel, unfortunately.

[@triq0]

@@battl3bear yea, sucks that this guy occasionally just has things off screen and out of tutorial that are working for him that we don’t have access too. thanks for pointing me in another direction tho, i appreciate the help :)

[@xicyxchaosx]

@@triq0 He doesn't give you his hit react profile that he attaches in the beginning to show you how the component works, but he clearly explains how to set up A profile later in the video if you just watch it the whole way through. You just will have to set up your own profile to use the component class. Would it be nice if he gave us that? Sure. However, this is more of an explanation style of tutorial, not a 'follow me step by step' tutorial.

[@damianm.8736]

Holy heck this is exactly what I was looking for. What a great tutorial, thank you!

[@EveBatStudios]

For a subject it seems like it’s going to be a little intimidating to approach I genuinely wasn’t expecting such a complete and concise front to back explanation. Fantastic channel thank you so much for your help

[@KillerBearsaw]

Congrats on your sponsorship! Best Unreal Engine and Game Dev channel on YT!

[@sighauser407]

I like everything about this including the music. Thanks a ton, there's like nothing like this out there.

[@nevadamarschke8052]

I was scouring the tube for a physical animation tut, after watching all of the 5min nodes vids. I was over the moon to see your name once again!

[@Fokkusu]

yo a tutorial on my favorite type of animation? lets goo! Thanks a lot! honestly I know this subject is particularly hard so this is such a god sent. I will be making sure that I use this on my games when appropiate :)

[@morganlak4337]

This really is the ultimate guide, so incredible!

[@mikelkram]

amazing tutorial this is exactly what I was looking for, thanks

[@wisdomoftheshadows]

Around the 7:05 mark. It's unclear but "set skeletal mesh component" needs to be connected with that white line to "set mesh." Or you will get warning "Accessed None Trying to read property Mesh".

[@AndrewByrnes1]

Did you find anyting around that mark where you can proceed with tutorial if you don't have a custom class? He kind of just says if you can do it this way if you have a custom class. But if you don't there's nothing to show how to proceed.

[@plushpash9147]

Thank you!

[@curiosity2972]

@@AndrewByrnes1 have you found a fix im stuck

[@alex-qn5xp]

@@curiosity2972 How are you stuck? There is nothing specific to his custom class in that logic.

[@AtomParkah]

@@curiosity2972 make sure that in your character blueprint, under details -> collision -> mesh, set your collision preset to ragdoll

[@mattiaminetta2504]

Ty! I tried to do this properly for over a year! I finally got it, will be in my next game! WANDERFUL FEALING!

[@JumboTTV]

0:21 Great video Charlie.. quick and informative thanks! lol

[@blinkrogue1344]

Haven seen 1 minute and 32 seconds, and this is my new favorite ue channel. subbed and happy bby

[@PrismaticaDev]

Woohoo!

[@jakelofgren2510]

Exactly what I needed. Honestly, your tutorials are some of the most informative on the internet. Your breadth of Unreal knowledge is insane. This is the best tutorial I've found on physics assets so far, not to mention everything else in this video/series on animation. Thanks so much! Keep making stuff like this!

[@battl3bear]

What did you select at 9:30? I do not have "already" a custom profile? If I dont select anything It doesnt work. Please send help :D

[@BaseRealityVR]

Dude :) I'm only 11 mins is and I can tell this is a video I'm 100% going to watch till the end. I really like your teaching style, clear and detailed descriptions of how and what things are doing. I have already done physical animation but I want more understanding to to get the result I'm after, for NPC hit reactions in VR. I have yet to come across more broader Physical animation breakdown that's as informative as this in all areas of this subject. Lean't some new trick and answered many of my unanswered questions SUBBED!

[@chann4215]

Best video on the topic in the entire YT. Keep up the amazing work. Really appreciate it.

[@Baleur]

Bro this is GOLD.

[@tylerpierce618]

Love the casual osrs music in the background lol

[@anddy9892]

I’m so glad I found your channel you have given me some amazing knowledge and inspiration!

[@Spongejeezy]

you are going to make my game amazing man. some of the things youtaught me are goign to go along way in a first person ancient warfare game

[@PrismaticaDev]

Hope it's going well!!

[@Spongejeezy]

@@PrismaticaDev it is man. I will be giving you a free copy when it comes out..in 2024 lol. Keep up the good work man.

[@masterreddit5520]

Thank you for sharing and creating this guide, fellow human being.

[@epkostaring]

Bro you're nailing this yt ting naturally 😄 keep doing what you do

[@lz4090]

Thank you for doing this, was suggesting this weeks ago. Agree, excited to see advanced ragdolls and physical animations blended to getup and death animations.

[@unrealdevop]

His timing on this was great.

[@lz4090]

@@unrealdevop both of your timing was great. hehe

[@IsaacCode95]

Thank You very much ! There isn't a better tutorial out there that does this guys job !

[@nawhz6292]

I support this channel! You are gonna become popular quickly!

[@lgdmumbler7026]

Totally unrelated to dev, but the little half-circles you did around 10:50 just reminded me of Masa and Mune in C Trigger joining together.

[@shotakhakhishvili8640]

Your channel is so underrated. Thanks for all the work!

[@YourSandbox]

my character gonna be awesome after this. thx master

[@bitbenthegamedeveloper90]

Thank you for this video! I learned a lot that I didn't know before. I appreciate that you made such a long and detailed video!

[@PrismaticaDev]

Any time :) Glad you found it useful!

[@pjwalczuk]

I know answering complex questions like this in the comment section might not be possible but I'll give it a shot anyway if I can get pointed in the right direction: I have a character with physical animation. A weapon (skeletal mesh, tried also static mesh) is attached to the socket in the hand of the character. If I push on the character's hand, the sword follows the hand. If I push on the sword, it rotates in the hand correctly. What I need to happen now is - if I push the weapon, it should also influence the character's physics accordingly, and the hand should follow the weapon/ the weapon should push on the hand and move it. Thanks for this guide anyway 🙏

[@Sargonius]

This is insanely good guide, thank you so much.

[@LionDev]

Thanks mate! You once again saved my day but this time for a different project than last time xD Keep going pls

[@slugmanestudios768]

man I was literally just thinking of trying this out, then here you are. Love it

[@mihaiwilson]

Thank you!

[@dylan_was_taken]

I have unreal engine but i've never used it lol I make 3d assets and scenes and stuff in blender along with textures but i'm amateur at sculpting and really bad at rigging and animating lol I came across your video and I'm so captivated 😂 you're an excellent teacher!! It feels like i'm sitting in a workshop with other people being taught by a really enthusiastic lecturer lmao

[@BeardGuardian]

This is by far the best and most to the point guide I’ve seen on physical animation! Thank you so much!

[@BlueprintBro]

Thank you. This is brilliant!

[@microbprod]

Wow, this is the most informative physical animation tutorial i've ever seen. I lost a lot of time to understand this thing. But your video helped me a lot. Nice work and thanks!

[@dantheplanner]

I've been looking for this.

[@Fried_Chicken307]

This was really helpful and wonderfully made thank you for making this

[@paulspalace4233]

Good for you bro! ive been tuning in for a while now :]

[@tonywood2283]

Outstanding.

[@rezak8219]

i like this game and hope to join to it, i wish best thing for this project and thank alot to all people that support it.

[@booq9168]

Amazing tutorial! Thanks so much for sharing!

[@Nomad454]

Dude that runescape music in the background made it so difficult for me to sit through this tutorial and pay attention without dropping this to go play some osrs.

[@itsMBWAAA]

this tutorial is excellent! Liked and subscribed!

[@johnmannp7158]

This is soo soo useful thank you!

[@flyingmalkie4346]

Ive never insta subbed so fast, i just know this will be good

[@Efpariah]

Bruh, you are a saint :) thank you so much for getting all this sweet sweet knowledge out there!

[@Devilishtroy]

I am really intrigued by your vids. Thanks so much

[@Wrexthor]

This was extremely valuable! Demystified a lot of whats going on it the physics asset view for me. Now if only i could get it to work as well on a daz skeleton...

[@marlo3d288]

Great video! In case you use UE5 Preview 2 keep in mind there is a bug so you cannot move the body with CTRL-R in the preview.

[@TheKwiji]

how did you make this work in UE5. No matter what I try it just won't simulate physics on the Pawn

[@wisdomoftheshadows]

@@TheKwiji Around the 7:05 mark. It's unclear but "set skeletal mesh component" needs to be connected with that white line to "set mesh."

[@gustavosantos106]

This is absolutely awesome. Thank you.

[@shaneruetz5604]

God damn this is cool shit bro. Definitely favorited.

[@PiterTraceurFA]

god bless you man

[@jasonruff1270]

i'll be honest, for tactical fighting games where being plus or minus is part of the gameplay and skill gap, i like animating all the different hit reactions, it's very calming but i guess i haven't been doing it long enough to drive me crazy lmao

[@juanmilanese]

Lol wtf man... where do you get this information on these obscure topics?... this is pure gold

[@CosmicComputer]

I'm just saying Charlie, this is your most popular video on youtube, and if a guy was to say update said video with physics control implementation.... I dunno, that might go over well :P

[@PrismaticaDev]

You raise a very good point :P I'll be doing one later this year when I also try out the Physical Character Movement stuff - I can imagine them working very well in tandem...

[@CosmicComputer]

@@PrismaticaDev squee!!!!!!!! You're the best!

[@shisokuseku8634]

1:31 i believe this is why games like Tekken (or project L) take SUCH a long time to develop, IN ADDITION to just startup frames, active frames and recovery frames. Tekken 7 Has animations for so many situations

[@kathgoo2503]

THANK YOU

[@KittenisKitten]

Just spend a whole morning, getting the tutorial to work, sadly i am utterly suck, but its been great help in learning. I am in UE5 and the "pelvis" make literal name does not work, and I got to end to find out I need to know how to do line trace attacks and hook them to get the hit animations to work, but I don't have them. So maybe a wee tutorial on what your hooking it upto? as I after 4 hours i am little bit tired only to find out it won't work.

[@awsamalmughrabi860]

amazing video, really helpful info. Thank you for your hard work!

[@Bunglay]

your videos are insane you should sell this shit bro ty for the upload! im gonna do ue5 for a whole year starting yesterday

[@PrismaticaDev]

You can always donate through the Patreon if you'd like to support the content and keep it free for everyone :) Glad to hear you're starting Unreal!

[@Bunglay]

@@PrismaticaDev Niceeee thank you!

[@3DBlurofficial]

Awesome tutorial i love the explanation part plz keep doing that.

[@victormustin2547]

I encountered an issue while implementing this, let me try to explain it and maybe think of a solution. When multiple hit occur in a small timeframe (like when shooting with an automatic weapon), the mesh that is hit doesn't have the time to transition back to its straight position and stop simulating before the next hit occurs. The new hit will just put the blend weight value back to 0, but the hit reaction won't be correct since you won't get the movement and velocity of a new impulse triggered from where the mesh currently is. Instead the mesh will just snap back the 1 blend weight position. The new impulse does happen but it starts from the laid back position, not the currently displayed position. Two solutions, one quick and easy, one a bit less intuitive. 1: shorter recovery time to avoid the issue altogether 2: instead of using blend weights to smoothly transition back to the non-simulated positon, you can put a little delay after a hit, and after that, set the physical animation profile to some really high values, and the skeleton animate back to it's default position progressively. (There is a Make PhysicalAnimationData node that can create a profile in blueprint.) Curious to hear your thoughts if you read this

[@victormustin2547]

Ok what i ended up doing was just put higher values in the physical animation profile (500, 50, 500, 50) with local turned off. This way the mesh snaps back to it's normal position right after the hit du to the physics. Then the transition done by the blend weights is just a tiny adjustment

[@brandonjacksoon]

Thanks mate! Great content! You are always like a Rock Star! ;) Keep rocking, I love your tutorials!

[@MrDalentineXD]

Great information. Awesome presentation.

[@literallyjeff]

Loving the content on this channel.

[@WhiteNorthStar1]

very useful and clear, thank you! :)

[@Beardgames]

Super interesting brother thanks for the info =)

[@onesilverleaf6781]

This was very awesome.

[@MrSmashmasterk]

You are so cool. Thank you!

[@HWGamingDev]

Loving the video, do you have tips on how to incorporate this into the ALSv4 project?

[@PrismaticaDev]

@@HWGamingDev it should all work as is in this video :)

[@HWGamingDev]

@@PrismaticaDev I tried it the way you showed in your video, but my player didn't ragdoll like it did in the video.

[@banish4cost]

were you teaching your class quake programming? if so that is so badass and i wish you were my teacher LOL can you include the download files / discord in the description?

[@Eyeslipper]

At 6:35 you added a casting class. Do I have to make a casting class myself or can I use a pre-made one?

[@luckyblockfatality]

this is a good question, i think we use thirdperson_BP from the template but im not sure yet

[@zikitamon]

this channel is so underrated i say

[@popados12]

Hi I'm following along with the tutorial and I'm getting an error for the "Set all bodies below simulate physics" node where it isn't finding the skeletal mesh? am i missing something? I have my "tutorial physical anim" connected to my "BP_movement" and the mesh physics are set correctly. However I get an error saying cannot access "None" of skeletal mesh at the node. Any help would be appreciated. Great tutorial that shows how powerful physical animation is.

[@ВячеславЕфремов-х5е]

The Unreal Engine is incredible. I have thoughts about creating a small third-person low poly, a game with good physics and a variety of mechanics. How long will it take to study UE5 and Blueprint?

[@PrismaticaDev]

It depends on how fast you learn! I felt pretty comfortable with it after a couple of months and felt like I could slap pretty much anything together to make a simple game.

[@oldlegs210]

My man, that's how I learnt left from right. 👍

[@PrismaticaDev]

Hahaha the struggle is real

[@maximkostindev]

Great video as always!

[@FF-FAN9999]

great video

[@roelthijssen2147]

Great video! Is this also possible on multiplayer? Or will the physics always be slightly off when replicated?

[@PrismaticaDev]

@@roelthijssen2147 you can replicate the events (apply phys animation + apply impulse) but the result will always be client-side so yeah it will be different for each client

[@roelthijssen2147]

@@PrismaticaDev thanks! That’s exactly what I was thinking of. Great animation series btw. You got a new sub! 🥸

[@pujp240]

Congrats on the sponsorship!

[@robertoferreira4896]

Hi PrismaticaDev! Found your video very interesting and would like to ask you a question. For the last 2 years I've been trying to make a skateboarding game similar to Skater XL (game made by Australian studio if I'm not mistaken). My absolute road block is animating the skateboarding which has its root simulating physics. I just cant get stable results when using the physical animations system. Would you perhaps have any suggestion on how to approach a game like this? Thank you and keep up the good work!

[@northwildadventures]

That background music reminds me of my childhood

[@PrinceBrosnan]

oh Where did you learn all this? I didn't find this in the documentation

[@DarkMuzishn]

This is Genius!!!!!!!!!!! wow!

[@danharris4549]

Great tutorial! Thanks a mill :-D

[@edgarmendes6498]

Super. I love you